I spent more than 12 years leading CARIB ID, the organization I founded in 2008 to ensure Caribbean immigrants could be recognized and counted accurately in the U.S. Census. In 2020, our fight paid off: For the first time in Census history, immigrants — and anyone in the U.S. with foreign heritage — could write in their identity and be counted as they truly are.
The U.S. Census Bureau itself has long stressed that every person counts, regardless of immigration status, because the Constitution demands it. Now Donald Trump is moving to undo that promise and weaponize the census for partisan gain, much as he tried to do in his first term.
Last week, Trump instructed the Commerce Department to change the way the U.S. Census Bureau collects data, explicitly ordering the department to exclude immigrants who are in the United States without legal status.
In his own words, the next count will be based on “modern day facts and figures” and “information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024” — a chilling signal that he intends to inject his political agenda into what should be a nonpartisan, constitutional process.
Make no mistake: The goal here is not accuracy; it’s power. Removing millions from the count will shift congressional seats, redraw political maps, and funnel federal dollars away from communities with high immigrant populations, disproportionately affecting states like New York, California, Florida, and Texas. This is not a census. It’s a nationalist maneuver designed to intimidate, disenfranchise, and tilt future elections.
Experts say Trump’s plan is riddled with legal and logistical problems. Under the Constitution and the Census Act, he cannot unilaterally order a new census. Congress would have to approve any major changes, and the Census Bureau would face enormous operational hurdles to carry out a mid-decade headcount. Even if attempted, such a process cannot legally be used for congressional apportionment in a year that does not end in zero.
“This isn’t something you can do overnight,” said Jeffrey Wice, a census and redistricting expert at the New York Law School. Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer and census consultant, called it a “half-baked idea.”
In the past six to seven months, however, we’ve seen how quickly things we once thought untouchable can be undone. The real danger lies not only in whether it can be done, but in why it’s being done. Trump has a long history of trying to manipulate the Census for political advantage. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked his attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census after the administration failed to justify it. The Census Bureau’s own experts warned that such a question would drive down participation among Hispanic and immigrant communities, resulting in an undercount of millions.
When that effort failed, Trump tried another end run: ordering that undocumented immigrants be excluded from the apportionment count used to divide up seats in Congress. Courts ruled the plan illegal, and the Supreme Court ultimately sidestepped the issue after Trump lost re-election.
This latest push fits into a broader pattern of undermining federal statistics to suit his political narrative. Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report undercut his claims of an economic boom. As Margo Anderson, a historian of the Census, put it, “Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system. He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, as he sees them.”
The stakes could not be higher. The Census is not just a headcount — it’s the foundation of American democracy. It determines congressional representation, shapes political maps, and directs $2.8 trillion in federal funding for schools, hospitals, roads, and disaster recovery. If immigrants — documented or not — are erased from that picture, so too are the communities they help build, sustain, and pay taxes into.
I have seen firsthand how hard it is to convince people — especially undocumented immigrants — that they can trust the system enough to be counted. Trump’s proposal would undo decades of outreach in an instant, replacing reassurance with fear. And fear is exactly what he wants, because fear keeps people silent, invisible, and powerless.
America cannot afford a politicized Census. Every person must count, because every person matters. To manipulate that truth for partisan advantage is not just bad policy — it is an attack on the Constitution itself.
The fight to protect a fair and accurate Census is not over. We must resist any effort to turn this essential democratic tool into a weapon of voter suppression, because if Trump succeeds, the damage will not last one election cycle — it will last a decade or more. And democracy may not survive the count.
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.